


At the Clear Fountain

by cellorocket



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Childhood, Gen, adorable crap
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-19
Updated: 2016-04-19
Packaged: 2018-06-03 03:55:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6595618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cellorocket/pseuds/cellorocket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was an old hand at storytelling, after only three years of entertaining a younger sibling; he let the silence linger on until she thought the anticipation would drive her mad. Before she could reprimand him for being an incorrigible tease, he took a breath. “There was a city with your name,” he told her. “A city made from red stone, carved in the side of a mountain.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	At the Clear Fountain

**Author's Note:**

> This is a little side project that branched off from Sunlight Girl -- basically I wanted to write more about them being friends as older kids, and as with all my projects it spiraled massively out of control. Sorry and hope you enjoy!

Auruo begged his mother to give him a haircut the night before Petra’s birthday. He didn’t actually care, not really; it was just that Mr. Ral always gave him a hard time, and his criticism was worse when Auruo was unkempt, disheveled, or otherwise. He wouldn’t normally care about thateither, except it _was_ Petra’s birthday tomorrow, and she got upset when he and Mr. Ral argued, so he figured at least something should go right for her. He was too poor to get her a real present, and he didn’t have much faith in the gift he’d managed to prepare with his limited means. Hence, an effort. A  _gesture_. 

“Are you sure?” his mother asked, frowning.

“It looks stupid,” he muttered. “C’mon, why’re you complaining? You always wanna cut it.”

“But you never want to,” she pointed out.

He’d _maybe_ chosen the wrong time to ambush her with this request; at the moment, she was stirring at a bubbling pot with her free hand and Benoit wedged against her hip, trying to blow a loose curl of hair out of her face. While massively pregnant. Carefully, he took Benoit out of her arms, guilt coiling in his stomach. “Never mind.”

She shot him a weary look. “So you can sneak off and do it yourself? Not a chance.”

“Mom!” Served him right for opening his stupid mouth, really. There was little use arguing with Marie Bossard when she decided something, but that didn’t stop him from trying. “Look, I changed my mind. I’m gonna play with Benoit.”

“But it _is_ looking shaggy.” She took the pot from the stove and sat him down on their wobbly footstool. While a cranky Benoit wriggled on his lap, she fished a folding razor from a lockbox on the top shelf. “Hold still,” she told him, unfolding the dull blade.

“Benoit’s the one thrashing like an idiot!”  he bleated, indignant to his very core. She was always putting this shit on him.

 “I’m NOT!” Benoit yelled.

“Stop thrashing, then!”

“Benoit is three,” his mother said, her voice cutting like a blade through the squabbling. “You are twelve. If you set him down, he’ll put his hands on the stove.”

It was so utterly typical – he’d had _one_ nice idea and in less than five minutes it had turned into a circus, a grotesque parade of annoyances and embarrassments. Fuming, he tightened his arms around the unruly toddler until Benoit tired himself out, slumping against Auruo’s chest with a raggedy sigh.

Without fanfare, his mother began her ministrations, easing the blade through his raggedy mop, if a little too quickly for Auruo’s liking. “You have hair just like mine,” she tutted, tugging on a stray curl at the nape of his neck. “Sorry.”

“It doesn’t look stupid on you,” he muttered. “Just don’t make me look bad.”

“It doesn’t look stupid on you, either.”

“Ngh.”

On a less important day he might have been inclined to give his mother a break; she was distracted, footsore, exhausted, and overstretched. But in that moment, all he knew was that she was a little too careless, a little too eager to complete the job, and the result would reflect this. Each slice of the razor through his hair was a portent of doom. Every curly tuft that fluttered down to his feet an epitaph. There would be no escape from this abysmal lapse in judgment.

After a few, eternal minutes of dread, she held the hand mirror out to him, giving his shoulder a squeeze. “How’s that?” she asked.

He gaped with increasing dismay. She’d cut his hair too short around his ears, so they stuck out in all their overlarge glory, but the top was somehow even worse; it tufted from the top of his head like cotton possessed by a particularly intractable spirit. He stared viciously at his reflection, miserable to the point of stomachache, watching those handlebar ears redden. Hadn’t he thought this would be a nice gesture? He’d be lucky if he wasn’t laughed out of her home.

“Thank you,” he croaked.

He waited until the rest of his family went to sleep before slipping outside. The moon was full, bright enough to cast a shadow and illuminate the street in all its cramped, filthy splendor. He pushed aside the hanging linens in front of the stoop, twitching the stench of beer, soap, and stale piss out of his nose. Two tomcats hissed and spat across the way, thrashing into a crate of bottles, which smashed onto the street. Next door, moans and squeaking bedsprings slipped from the cracks in the windows, chased by a cry so strident that it made Auruo’s ears burn. They were always so fucking loud, he thought irritably. Everything was always so loud here. There were no secrets on this street, from the open eyes and ears of their neighbors or the patrons that frequented the tavern one block over, but there were even fewer in his home.

Propping the hand mirror against the wall, he perched awkwardly in front of it with razor in left hand, angling for a better look. He could salvage this somehow, perhaps by evening out the length … 

By morning, he’d made a muck of it with his increasingly desperate attempts. Shorn patches dotted his skull, uneven tufts sticking out in all directions, a thousand times worse than the ridiculous haircut of the night before. He had even managed to nick his scalp a few places in his fervor. He looked like he’d stuck his head inside a wheat thresher. He looked absolutely fucking ridiculous.

It was as a defeated soldier of fate that he slunk back inside. Dawn light teased the tops of the buildings, still early enough that the street was almost silent, the lull before noisy daybreak.  He hoped that he could grab a hat or something and skip off to the work carts before his family woke up, but that hope was dashed when he glanced toward the table. His father stared open-mouthed at the utter ruin he’d made of himself; it took him a moment to recognize that Auruo was indeed his son and not some escaped convict, rooting around their drawers.

“H-hey dad,” he muttered. “Can I borrow a hat?”

To his credit, his father found something suitable without any concerned editorials, for which Auruo was thankful. This was likely to be the only thing that would go right today.  

He considered pretending to be ill, but he’d have to pretend to be ill for at least a couple of weeks, and he didn’t want to go that long without seeing her, let alone ditch her on her birthday. But the hat only covered part of the devastation, so it was as a marked man that Auruo crept down the daylight streets with his father, from his poor neighborhood to the mill for an infuriatingly embarrassing shift. At the sight of his shorn skull, Gaspard laughed so hard he choked; even Mr. Baker, for all his kindness, couldn’t seem to stifle a chuckle at Auruo’s expense. His ears were positively burning by the time he stormed from the factory ten hours later, smelling like soot and steel, a shiny new burn on his arm the only fruit of his furious distraction.

It wasn’t a long trek to Petra’s neighborhood, a row of nice homes a few blocks from East Market. He was a sore sight; fulminous expression, shorn scalp, shoulders hiked halfway to his ridiculous fucking ears. None of this would have happened if he had normal ears. Mr. Ral would probably like him. Petra would probably like him better. He hated those ears, like he hated his old man face and knobby knees. He hated his father’s stupid, old-fashioned hat that smelled like dust. He hated most of all that Petra would probably laugh at him, or feel sorry for him, and he didn’t know which was worse. 

Swallowing, he rapped on her door twice, gallows-dread coiling in his gut. For a moment he thought Petra might answer, but that hope was dashed when the door flew open to reveal an irritable looking Mr. Ral, his cheeks and apron spattered with flour and saffron. 

“What in the world happened to you?” he said, gaping at the bald patches beneath the rim of Auruo’s hat, and his expression was every bit the condemnation he wouldn’t speak. In this nice neighborhood, surrounded by their nice homes, Auruo was worse than ridiculous; he was a spectacle. 

He opened his mouth to retort, but Petra saved him, just as she always did. “He was mugged by delinquent barbers, obviously. Don’t be insensitive.” And with a conspiratorial smile, she reached for Auruo and dragged him inside by the arm, and he knew from the way she smiled that he was part of the joke, that she was laughing at his side, not at his foolishness. And he’d never loved anyone more.

“I like your hat,” she told him, beaming. 

~

They made camp in the drawing room, plopping onto the rug – a threadbare thing, but far finer than anything she’d seen in Auruo’s home. Her father pretended not to be paying attention as he resumed his irritable labors in the flour-spattered kitchen, but every few moments Petra would see his eyes peeking around the corner, watching for any sign of mischief.

Gently, she lifted the hat from Auruo’s head, to better survey the damage. “What happened?” she asked, careful to keep the tenderness from her tone. He never reacted well to pity.

He shrugged. “I asked ma to give me a haircut. And it came out f- stupid, and I … tried to fix it.”

Of course he had. “Could I even it out a bit? Put some salve on the cuts, maybe?” She clucked her tongue. “You went to the mill like that? They probably need to be cleaned, too.”

“Will you just – lay off, alright? Geez.” He flapped his hands at her. “Can you think about yourself for once?”

“Nope,” she said, grinning.

“Just – lay off! It’s your stupid birthday, alright?”

It was, indeed. In her old village, her birthday fell just before the harvest, when the days were hot but a cool breeze rolled in from the lake, sweeping through the streets and shops, the cottages dotted along the landscape. Here in Karanese, the August heat positively radiated from the cobblestones; even throwing the windows wide to encourage a breeze did nothing to cool their stifling homes. The air was still and dull and hot, too hot for anyone to stand. She thought of Auruo in the sweltering mill all day and pity overwhelmed her. “Do you want something to eat?”

He always wanted something to eat; it spoke to his determination that he waved her off again. “I’m gonna put my hand over your mouth if you don’t shut it,” he hissed, trying not to laugh. “Just – shh! Don’t you want your f- present?”  

She tried not to fidget in place, though she was suddenly so excited she could hardly manage it. “A present?”

“Yeah. Look, I’ve been sitting on this for a couple weeks now, ever since I heard – I probably should’ve told you right away, but I figured it’d be cool to hear on your birthday, since I don’t – well anyway one of the guys I work with is a real big mouth, but he knows this guy who works one of the supply caravans from Sina, and that guy knows this other guy that runs with some weird group that hangs out in the Golden Rat, and _they_ hear a bunch of shit from the brothel a few streets over, and – anyway, he didn’t actually tell me anyone’s names so I couldn’t check. And I don’t know exactly where it came from so it’s probably bullshit, alright?”

“You’re giving me ‘probably bullshit’ for my birthday?”

“Well … I dunno. It’s probably fake, but … well –“

“Just spit it out!”

He was an old hand at storytelling, after only three years of entertaining a younger sibling; he let the silence linger on until she thought the anticipation would drive her mad. Before she could reprimand him for being an incorrigible tease, he took a breath. “There was a city with your name,” he told her. “A city made from red stone, carved in the side of a mountain.”

She couldn’t speak at first. It sounded too fantastic to be real, but even as a fantasy it transported, made her shiver with primal awareness. “My name?”

“Yeah … I asked the guy about it, the big-mouth, ‘cause y’know – he’s just chattering away about this shit he heard from all over, and most of it is crap. Y’know, gossip. So and so bilked such and such, stole his pants, he had to crawl back bare-assed, the kinda stuff he’d find funny because he’s an idiot. But then he says your name – and it’s not about you, obviously, but about some old wreck in the middle of nowhere. So I’m asking, what kind of city, where the hell is it, how does he know about it. And he gives me a bunch of crap that doesn’t have anything to do with anything because he talks to too many fuckin’ people, but when he did get to the point … it’s this city they carved right out of the cliff faces. Way back before the Titans, when there were people all over. The whole fuckin’ thing is carved right in the mountain, and it’s got your name. That’s all he knew.”

It was the best gift she’d ever received, better than anything she could have hoped for. He’d given her a place to visit in dreams. Already, the mighty spires of this mountain city spooled out in her thoughts, a place as red as her hair, shimmering under the blistering summer sun. She thought of the people who would have lived in that far land, baskets wedged against their hips, talking and laughing with their neighbors, scheming against their rivals. She thought of a them walking the dusty paths to their homes in the cool stone.

“Let’s find out more,” she whispered, shivering with purpose.

“Ah, Petra … c’mon, I told you it’s probably … you know it’s probably made up. I just thought it was cool, that some mountain city had your name, even in a story.”

“But it could be real!” she insisted. “And even so, don’t you think there’s more to it?”

“Maybe …”

“Don’t tell me you’re going to make me look all on my own!”

His eyes flashed, red flushing from cheeks to the tips of his ears, and the effect was both ridiculous and tender with his mutilated hair. “No fuckin’ way!”

Beaming, she gripped his hands before he could wiggle out of reach. This was the manner of most accords between them, as it had been their mode of first understanding; she felt the heat of his palm against hers, and it was as if they shared a purpose, a heartbeat. For all his grumbling, he always came along. They did everything together.

“Next Sunday,” she promised him, squeezing his fingers. “We start looking.”


End file.
